ENHANCED POLICY ANALYSIS USING INTEGRATED LAND USE TRANSPORT ECONOMIC MODELS

Policymakers are increasingly asking questions about the wider impacts of transport policy, expanding consideration beyond the transport system to include land use and the larger economic system. Integrated transport land use economic models support this trend, recasting travel and transport as by-products of economic activities and representing the connections between transport policy and economic impacts in a spatial context. As such, they help in addressing complex policy questions that models with a more limited transportation-only scope of representation - from the oldest traditional 4-step models to the latest tour-based microsimulations - cannot address, at least not well. This paper highlights some of the support provided by integrated models, based on applications of the Oregon TRANUS and Sacramento MEPLAN and PECAS integrated models. It outlines how these integrated models have been found to add value, helping land use forecasting, cumulative and indirect impact analyses, evaluation of economic impacts and communications across disciplines.